DBS chief Piyush Gupta takes 30% variable pay cut over banking outages

SINGAPORE’S largest bank DBS is cutting the variable pay of its management committee, including chief executive Piyush Gupta, as its members take accountability for the bank’s digital disruptions in 2023.

Variable pay of the group management committee is collectively reduced by 21 per cent, while Gupta will take a deeper cut of 30 per cent, the bank said in its fourth-quarter results release on Wednesday (Feb 7).

This means that Gupta’s variable pay for 2023 will be slashed by S$4.14 million to S$9.66 million.

Assuming he receives the same salary remuneration as 2022, at S$1.5 million, this would bring his total remuneration for 2023 to around S$11.16 million. His actual base salary figure for 2023 has not yet been disclosed.

The cut in variable pay likely means that Gupta will lose his bragging rights as the highest-paid executive among the three local banks.

He had earned S$15.4 million in 2022, while UOB CEO Wee Ee Cheong was paid S$14.2 million, and OCBC CEO Helen Wong received S$11.2 million.

However, he stressed that the focus should be on the bank’s earnings, which again reached record levels in 2023.

“Other than the tech instances, we’ve had a blowout year. It’s not just the profits, it is every other part of what we’re trying to do – our transformation agenda, our customer feedback score, everything is extraordinarily strong,” Gupta said at a media briefing on Wednesday.

Tech resiliency

Meanwhile, Gupta said the bank has been working to strengthen its tech capabilities, in light of the digital disruptions it faced in 2023.

DBS has spent S$25 million of the S$80 million it set aside to enhance system resiliency. Gupta noted that the bank has been spending on various areas including consultants, allocating extra resources, and new hardware.

He expects the bank to complete 90 per cent of these activities by the end of March, adding that customers can expect greater service reliability, faster full recovery of services, and alternate channels for services should issues occur.

Additionally, Gupta said the bank has also set aside S$15 million in expenses in 2023, to pay out a one-time bonus for junior employees, who make up half of the total headcount.

The bank noted that this was in line with the latest guidelines issued by Singapore’s National Wages Council to help lower-income employees cope with higher costs of living.